Rutherford is a liquid-propellant rocket engine designed by aerospace company

Rocket Lab Rocket Lab Corporation is a Public company, publicly traded aerospace manufacturer and List of launch service providers, launch service provider. Its Rocket Lab Electron, Electron orbital rocket launches Small satellite, small satellites, and ha ...

and manufactured in

Long Beach Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. The engine is used on the company's own rocket,

Electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...

. It uses LOX (liquid oxygen) and

RP-1 RP-1 (Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) and similar fuels like RG-1 and T-1 are highly refined kerosene formulations used as rocket fuel. Liquid-fueled rockets that use RP-1 as fuel are known as kerolox rockets. In their engines, RP- ...

(refined kerosene) as its propellants and is the first flight-ready engine to use the electric-pump-fed cycle. The rocket uses a similar engine arrangement to the

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, an ...

; a two-stage rocket using a cluster of nine identical engines on the first stage, and one vacuum-optimized version with a longer nozzle on the second stage. This arrangement is also known as an octaweb. The sea-level version produces of thrust and has a

specific impulse Specific impulse (usually abbreviated ) is a measure of how efficiently a reaction mass engine, such as a rocket engine, rocket using propellant or a jet engine using fuel, generates thrust. In general, this is a ratio of the ''Impulse (physics), ...

of , while the vacuum optimized-version produces of thrust and has a specific impulse of . First test-firing took place in 2013. The engine was qualified for flight in March 2016 and had its first flight on 25 May 2017. As of April 2024, the engine has powered 47 Electron flights in total, making the count of flown engines 369, including one engine flown twice.

Description

Rutherford is named after renowned New Zealand-born scientist

Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both Atomic physics, atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nu ...

. It is a small liquid-propellant rocket engine designed to be simple and cheap to produce. It is used as both a first-stage and a second-stage engine, which simplifies logistics and improves economies of scale. To reduce its cost, it uses the electric-pump feed cycle, being the first flight-ready engine of such type. It is fabricated largely by

3D printing 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer ...

, using a method called laser powder bed fusion, and more specifically Direct Metal Laser Solidification (DMLS®). Its combustion chamber, injectors, pumps, and main propellant valves are all 3D-printed. As with all pump-fed engines, the Rutherford uses a rotodynamic pump to increase the pressure from the tanks to that needed by the combustion chamber. The use of a pump avoids the need for heavy tanks capable of holding high pressures and the high amounts of inert gas needed to keep the tanks pressurized during flight. The pumps (one for the fuel and one for the oxidizer) in electric-pump feed engines are driven by an

electric motor An electric motor is a machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a electromagnetic coil, wire winding to gene ...

. The Rutherford engine uses dual brushless DC electric motors and a

lithium polymer battery A lithium polymer battery, or more correctly, lithium-ion polymer battery (abbreviated as LiPo, LIP, Li-poly, lithium-poly, and others), is a rechargeable battery derived from lithium-ion and lithium-metal battery technology. The primary differ ...

. It is claimed that this improves efficiency from the 50% of a typical

gas-generator cycle The gas-generator cycle, also referred to as the GG cycle or colloquially as an open cycle, is one of the most commonly used power cycles in bipropellant liquid rocket engines. Propellant is burned in a gas generator (analogous to, but distinct ...

to 95%. However, the battery pack increases the weight of the complete engine and presents an energy conversion issue. Each engine has two small motors that generate while spinning at 40 000

rpm Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or r⋅min−1) is a unit of rotational speed (or rotational frequency) for rotating machines. One revolution per minute is equivalent to hertz. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 def ...

. The first-stage battery, which has to power the pumps of nine engines simultaneously, can provide over of electric power. The engine is regeneratively cooled, meaning that before injection some of the cold

is passed through cooling channels embedded in the combustion chamber and nozzle structure, transferring heat away from them, before finally being injected into the combustion chamber.

References

External links

Rocket Lab Propulsion Section
{{Rocket Lab Rutherford Rocket engines using kerosene propellant Rocket engines using the electric pump-fed cycle Space programme of New Zealand Space program of the United States

Description

See also

References

External links